SEO, AEO, GEO: What Your Website Can't Do Alone

"Should we do AEO or GEO?" The question shows up in almost every brief now that ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews answer in place of the ten blue links. Three acronyms are in circulation, often used interchangeably, sometimes sold as three separate services.

The short answer: SEO gets you ranked in Google, AEO makes your page the direct answer to a question, GEO gets your brand cited in an answer written by an AI. Google itself files the last two under SEO. One difference still weighs heavily on budgets: AEO is worked on your own pages, GEO depends mostly on what other sites say about you.

Precise definitions, a comparison table, Google's official position and how to split the effort: here is what you need to decide.

Key takeaways on SEO, AEO and GEO

• SEO aims for a ranking in Google results, AEO for a direct answer extracted from your page, GEO for a citation or mention of your brand in an AI answer (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Mode).
• For Google, optimizing for its AI features is still SEO: no llms.txt file, no special content splitting, no dedicated markup.
• AEO relies mainly on the quality and structure of your own pages.
• GEO depends heavily on third-party media: according to a University of Toronto study, AI engines mostly cite independent sources rather than brand websites.

SEO, AEO, GEO: three short definitions

SEO (search engine optimization) covers the technical, editorial and popularity work (links) that moves a page up in the results of a search engine such as Google. It is measured in rankings, impressions and clicks.

AEO (answer engine optimization) has a narrower goal: making your page provide the direct answer to a specific question. The term predates generative AI. It first referred to work on featured snippets, "People Also Ask" boxes and voice assistants. Today it also applies to AI Overviews and to the short answers of AI assistants.

GEO (generative engine optimization) targets answers written by an AI from several sources. The term comes from a research paper published in November 2023 by a team including researchers from Princeton and IIT Delhi, GEO: Generative Engine Optimization. On their test benchmark, some content changes (adding statistics, quotations, sources) increase a page's visibility in these answers by up to 40%.

None of these terms has a standard definition, and many players use AEO and GEO as synonyms. A side note: in international trade, AEO also stands for Authorised Economic Operator, a customs status unrelated to search.

Key takeaway: SEO = a ranking, AEO = an extracted answer, GEO = a citation in a generated answer. The boundaries remain blurry and usage varies from one player to another.

SEO, AEO and GEO comparison table

This table compares the three disciplines on what changes in practice: the target surface, the unit you work on and where most of the effort happens.

Key takeaway: the three disciplines share the same foundation. The real dividing line is where the work happens: your pages for AEO, the ecosystem of sources for GEO.

What Google officially says about AEO and GEO

On May 15, 2026, Google published a guide to optimizing for its generative AI features (AI Overviews and AI Mode), updated in July 2026. It names AEO and GEO explicitly and settles the question: from Google Search's perspective, optimizing for generative search means optimizing the search experience, so it is SEO.

The reason is technical. These features rely on Google's index and ranking systems, through retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and "query fan-out", which runs several sub-queries related to the original question. To be eligible, a page must be indexed and able to appear with a snippet.

The guide also lists what is useless on Google's side: an llms.txt file, splitting content into small chunks, rewriting specifically for AI, dedicated schema.org markup. Structured data remains useful for rich results, without being a condition for appearing. Google adds that seeking inauthentic mentions does not help.

Two limits to keep in mind. This guide only covers Google, not ChatGPT or Perplexity, which have their own search systems. And "it's SEO" does not mean "nothing changes": in a study published in March 2026 covering 863,000 SERPs, Ahrefs found that only 38% of the pages cited in AI Overviews rank in the top 10 for the same query, compared with 76% in its first study in July 2025. Ahrefs attributes this to fan-out: sources increasingly come from the results of sub-queries.

Key takeaway: for Google, AEO and GEO are part of SEO. But cited pages increasingly come from outside the top 10 of the original query, which means covering a topic from every angle.

AEO: work that happens on your pages

AEO means making a page easy to reuse as an answer. Almost every lever is under your control:

• Answer in the first sentence of each section, then expand with context and evidence.
• Sections that stand on their own: a question, an answer, something that supports it (data, example, source). It is first and foremost about readability for the reader, which Google also asks for.
• Cover related questions on the same page, the ones fan-out is likely to explore. Creating one page per query variation to manipulate answers is counterproductive: Google classifies it as scaled content abuse.
• Bring what doesn't exist elsewhere: a field perspective, your own data, a limitation others leave out. Google's guide insists on this "non-commodity" content.
• Check the technical basics: indexable page, snippet allowed, content present in the HTML.

This discipline has a clear limit: it makes a page citable, it does not guarantee it will be chosen. When engines prefer other sources to describe your market, a perfect page can stay absent from answers.

Key takeaway: AEO is managed almost entirely in-house. It is necessary, but not enough to exist in AI answers.

GEO: what other sites say about you matters more

A University of Toronto team compared the sources cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude with Google's results (Generative Engine Optimization: How to Dominate AI Search, September 2025). The researchers classify each domain into three categories: brand site, social platform, or "earned" source (independent media, review site, comparison site).

The contrast is clear. For automotive queries in the United States, Google returns 45.1% earned sources, 39.5% brand sites and 15.4% social content. The web search version of ChatGPT cites 81.9% earned sources, 18.1% brand sites and no social content. For questions about well-known brands, the earned share reaches 93.5% in ChatGPT. The study is still a preprint, focused on ranking queries ("top 10...") and 2025 models, but the trend points the same way across all the engines tested.

In the AI visibility analyses we run for our clients, the same pattern often comes up: on the prompts of a category, the cited sources are media outlets, comparisons and guides, rarely the brand's own site.

The authors therefore recommend earning coverage in authoritative publications and links from those domains. Links and mentions work together: the link supports authority, the mention feeds the description AIs reuse. As Google points out, the mention must be authentic: a media outlet in your field, content that is useful to the reader, a brand cited where it makes sense. That is the principle behind an AI answer visibility strategy built on third-party media.

Key takeaway: GEO is largely won outside your site, in the media AIs already consult on your topic.

SEO, AEO, GEO: how to split the effort

There is no point buying three services that bill the same fundamentals three times. Split the work by location instead:

1. The SEO foundation. Indexable pages, snippets allowed, sound technical basics, links from sites in your industry, for example through link building campaigns on niche media. Without this foundation, neither AEO nor GEO takes off.
2. AEO on priority pages. List the 10 to 20 questions that matter commercially, then rewrite the pages concerned: answer first, evidence, visible update date.
3. GEO off-site. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini the prompts of your category, note the cited sources, then aim for a presence on those sources: article, mention in existing content, comparison.
4. Measurement. On Google's side, the generative AI performance report in Search Console. On the AI assistant side, regular tracking of your prompts (citation rate, share of voice, cited sources). Google points out that no third-party tool has access to its internal systems: read these figures as trends.

Key takeaway: SEO foundation first, AEO on a few key pages, GEO on the sources AIs already cite, and separate measurement for each engine.

SEO, AEO and GEO describe the same job seen from three different surfaces, and Google says so itself. The real difference is not in the acronyms but in where the work happens: your pages can become the best answer, only other sites can confirm that your brand matters. Concrete next step: list ten prompts in your category, note which sources AIs cite, and compare them with those where your brand appears today.

Your questions about SEO, AEO and GEO

What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?

SEO aims for a ranking in the results of a search engine such as Google. AEO aims for a page to provide the direct answer to a question, in a featured snippet, an AI Overview or a voice assistant. GEO aims for a brand to be cited or mentioned in an answer written by an AI such as ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini. All three share the same foundation, but AEO is worked mostly on your pages, while GEO depends a lot on the third-party sources that talk about you.

Do AEO and GEO replace SEO?

No. In its May 2026 guide, Google states that its generative AI features rely on its usual ranking systems and that optimizing for them is SEO. A page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet to appear in an AI Overview. AEO and GEO add goals and metrics, they do not replace the technical, editorial and popularity foundation.

Are AEO and GEO the same thing?

The two terms are often used as synonyms and neither has a standard definition. AEO comes from featured snippets and voice search: it is about the direct answer to a question. GEO, named in a 2023 research paper, is about a source being cited in an answer generated from several pages. In practice, the useful difference lies in where the work happens: your pages for AEO, the ecosystem of sources for GEO.

Do backlinks still help to get cited by AIs?

Yes. Google's AI features rely on its index and ranking systems, in which links still play a role. The University of Toronto researchers also recommend earning links from the independent media AIs cite, because these domains feed the trust engines place in a brand. Links and brand mentions complement each other: the link supports authority, the mention feeds the description AIs reuse.

How do you measure AEO and GEO visibility?

For Google, the generative AI performance report in Search Console shows how your content appears in AI features. For ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini, track a list of prompts representative of your category and record your citation rate, your share of voice against competitors and the cited sources. These measurements fluctuate from one generated answer to the next: think in trends over several weeks.

Sources

• Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search, Google Search Central, published May 2026, updated July 2026
• Generative Engine Optimization: How to Dominate AI Search, M. Chen, X. Wang, K. Chen, N. Koudas, University of Toronto, arXiv, 2025
• GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, P. Aggarwal et al., arXiv, 2023 (presented at KDD 2024)
• Update: 38% of AI Overview Citations Pull From The Top 10, L. Linehan, Ahrefs, 2026